Description
- Kind: Perfectbound
- Finish: matte
- Pages: 94
- Language: English
- Date Published: March 2026
- ISBN 978-1-962847-44-5
Praise
This collection is a succession of unabashed and guilty pleasures. The sprezzatura of Kaufmann’s language, how he casually torques the personal and everyday into the realm of the metaphysical, socio-political, and ethical, and then chills us with moments of breath-stopping lyricism, surprise, or perfectly calibrated wit, leaves a reader asking “how did he do that?” —Mark Scroggins
Where has David Kaufmann’s poetry been all my life? Many of us know his essential critical writing, and it turns out that his poetry launches off the page in the same direction. These poems are beautifully made loops of terse, witty, insights into our political and intimate worlds. In other words, what’s not to like?! We might have / Equity out the old / Whazzoo but cash my friend’s / The problem. We are / Not liquid. We do not / Flow. We cannot rise / To the tide. These poems are one swell critique of capitalism that capitalism will find hard to swallow, to digest. —Robert Fitterman
Excerpt
I WON’T BE TAKING ANY QUESTIONS
I know or I think I do-
The brightness of the esplanade like
The old folks’ reflection off the Ferris wheel
Or the roller coaster cut into knots
On the parkway beyond the entrance
To the park itself. Money changes
Hands at the gate, that’s just
The way we do it, as if
A token could make it work. It does.
The Dow rises and drops regardless
And, to be honest, no one really cares
Because, as indices go,
It has its limitations, like a place that everyone
Talked about once, though it’s hardly really
A thing anymore. We’ve taken over
The outskirts instead, and those
Fireworks you’ve come to expect?
They’ve flared up, then off. They’ve simply
Moved on.
Author
David Kaufmann, an eighth-generation New Yorker, attended Princeton and Yale Universities and has been teaching literature at George Mason University since 1989. He is the author of three academic monographs (The Business of Common Life [1995]; Telling Stories: The Later Works of Philip Guston [2010]; and Reading Uncreative Writing [2017]; a number of articles on literature and Critical Theory as well as close to one hundred reviews and newspaper features. His poetry has appeared in, amongst other places, Tupelo Quarterly, Flashpoint!, Drunken Boat; Glitter Pony; Trilobite and Lute & Drum. He lives with his wife. an expert in nuclear nonproliferation, outside Washington, DC.